Microsoft adds anti-cheat game feature to Windows 10

Microsoft started rolling out the Windows 10 Fall Creators Update to PCs earlier this week, complete with features like Windows Mixed Reality and people integration for the taskbar. While most of the new additions are obvious, Microsoft quietly added an anti-cheat feature for games.

The software giant first revealed the feature in a Windows 10 Insider build back in July, promising to share more information. VG247 reports that Microsoft is now documenting its new “TruePlay” anti-cheat feature, and it’s designed for game developers to combat activity like aimbots or wallhacks.

It appears to be similar to Valve’s own ant-cheating software (VAC), and the system collects data within games and generates alerts when there’s something out of the ordinary. Developers will receive the information if TruePlay determines there’s something particularly nefarious going on. TruePlay is disabled by default at the moment in the gaming settings for Windows 10, but Microsoft is starting to make the API available to developers.

Developers will be able to use TruePlay in their Microsoft Store games, so this is limited to Universal Windows Platform (UWP) games for now. There aren’t many of those in the Microsoft Store just yet outside of Forza, Cuphead, and other Microsoft Studios games, but Microsoft has been trying to tempt developers to adopt its Xbox Play Anywhere system to offer the same game across Xbox One and Windows 10. This might be a useful feature in the future, but as it’s limited to UWP it doesn’t really address the games that people are actually cheating in today.